How a Comcast employee's nap caused Censorhip
By Lauren Hovel
Posted on Mon Jul 24, 2006 at 04:27:07 PM EST
How well are a Comcast employee's nap, censorship, and Net Neutrality related?
Very closely, it turns out.
Earlier this month, ABC's Nightline did a segment on abuse of consumers by large corporations, featuring a video of a Comcast employee who fell asleep on a customer's couch while he was supposed to be making repairs. The segment also showed anti-Comcast websites and reported that Comcast hires people to monitor such sites, as Timothy Karr reports on SavetheInternet.com.
However, when the Nightline episode appeared on Comcast's video-on-demand service, the "sleepy technician" video and the remarks critical of Comcast had mysteriously disappeared.
Compare the original Nightline version with Comcast's version.
The Consumerist blog originally reported about this missing video, accusing Comcast of censorship, but a Comcast employee quickly responded that the portion of Nightline was missing from Comcast purely by mistake - an error made by an ABC technician during encoding.
To be sure, Comcast could have been telling the truth - that the only part of the Nightline episode accidentally removed was, coincidentally, the only part of the episode criticizing Comcast. But if recent debate over telecom legislation has taught us anything, it pays to be skeptical when dealing with ISPs like Comcast.
As Harold Feld writes on wetmachine.com:
Am I the only one who notices this apparent never ending stream of corporate oopsies[?] Not just from Comcast mind. The times myspace drops the SavetheInternet and anti-Ted Stevens blogs, the time Cox blocks Craigslist, the time AOL blocked the "Dear AOL" campaign emails critical of its "Certified mail" program? How many oopsies before I get off the paranoid speculation list?
ISPs like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T have adamantly opposed Net Neutrality legislation for the Internet. They claim non-discrimination laws are unnecessary, and they have repeatedly promised not to censor certain web content. Comcast's recent actions of censorship make us all the more convinced that the ISPs are full of lies, and all the more certain that Net Neutrality legislation is absolutely essential to saving the Internet.
Tags: net neutrality, censorship, media and democracy, Comcast (all tags)
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